DAYTONA 500 A COMPLEX, STRATEGIC CHALLENGE

Robert Markus, Chicago TribuneCHICAGO TRIBUNE

When he's coaching the Washington Redskins, Joe Gibbs may draw up a perfect game plan. But as owner of a front-row car in Sunday's Daytona 500, he says, "My job is just to pray and stand back and get out of the way."

"This is not like football," says owner-driver Darrell Waltrip, "where you start the game and play for 60 minutes and then quit. There are interruptions, and because of that the best strategy may not work.

"When I won the Daytona 500 (in 1989), we made a decision to go into the pits with 53 laps to go. No one else did, and that's why we won."

That doesn't mean that drivers will go into Sunday's race without a game plan.

"There are two or three possible game plans," says Waltrip. "One is to outrun everybody, but with that comes some baggage. You're burning a lot of fuel and you may have to make one more pit stop. Is that smart? Maybe not. Maybe it's smarter to be out front sometimes and draft somebody other times to save fuel."

A second strategy Waltrip offers, and the one that gave him his only victory in NASCAR's most important race, is, "You can go for fuel mileage." That strategy can win, he says, if a lot of other cars are faster than yours.

"It's not a good plan," he says, "but it may be your only option."

The third way to win the race, he says, "is by the decisions your crew makes during the race. Do you take on four tires or two? Do you take on two tires? Or just gas and go? These are things we'll know as the week goes on."

A four-tire stop takes 20 to 22 seconds, while a team can take on just two tires in 14 or 15 seconds. Most teams plan four pit stops, but things seldom go according to plan. Few teams can resist stopping during caution periods, when the slower pace enables them to pit and get back out without losing a lap.

"But if there are 34 cars on the lead lap," wonders Waltrip, "do I want to come in and take on two gallons and go out in 34th place?"

Race strategy for the Daytona 500 has changed dramatically from the years when Richard Petty would bide his time and take control of the race in the final 100 miles.

"With the restrictor plates," says Junior Johnson, the 1960 race winner and owner of the car Bill Elliott will drive Sunday, "it makes it harder to pass and work your way to the front. You've got to have a plan where you're never too far back late in the race because you don't have time to get to the front."

Restrictor plates, used only here and at Talladega, Ala., restrict the flow of air to the engine, cutting horsepower and speed. It is as if Frank Shorter were to run a marathon wearing nose clamps.

"You can catch people," says Waltrip, "but you can't pass them and if you do pass them, you can't get away from them."

For Dale Earnhardt, there is only one way to run the Daytona 500. "I think the place to be is out in front," says the five-time Winston Cup champion, who has never won the Daytona 500.

"Going out front and running your race is what it takes," says Earnhardt. "Yes, I know, we've been dominant enough to do that in a few races and haven't won. But if the circumstances were right, we would have won."

Earnhardt's best chance to win came in 1990 when he had a half-lap lead on the field going into the third turn of the final lap. Then he ran over a bell housing unit, cut a tire and watched helplessly as Derrike Cope swept past to victory.

In winning Sunday's Busch Clash, Earnhardt took only five laps to go from 15th to first. In the 200-lap Daytona 500, he says, "You'll take a little more time, but the longer you stay back there, the more chance you have to get in trouble. If something flies off of one of those cars, you can bust a tire or something.

"You want to work your way up to where there's only two or three cars where something can go wrong instead of seven or eight. If that racecar is going to run Sunday, I'm going up front and I'm going up front fast."

"They always say the safest place to be is up front," agrees Waltrip, "but last year we were running up in the first five or six cars and we all got taken out."

That was the race where Elliott, Sterling Marlin and Ernie Irvan, coming out of a turn three abreast in the lead, started a chain-reaction wreck that took out most of the contenders. Davey Allison sneaked through and won.

"So now," says Waltrip, "you say, well, darn, maybe you ought to lay back awhile. But then if you do, with the restrictor plates, you can hardly catch up."

Waltrip says he formulates his race strategy as the week goes on. "I look at the Busch Clash on Sunday, and if they're going wild and running over each other, that tells me I've got to be on my toes all week and I've got to have a conservative game plan," he says.

"But if everybody's driving with common sense, it tells me I can drive my car on the bottom of the racetrack I don't have a game plan yet. It will probably be Saturday afternoon before I know.

"We'll look at the 125-mile races Thursday and see the kind of lap pace the fast cars can run and see how our car stacks up."

If he can run with the leaders, Waltrip likely will try to get near the front quickly on Sunday. If not, he's a master at extending his fuel mileage.

"You can put 22 gallons in these cars," he says, "and every driver can burn it differently." The year he won the race, "it was a spur-of-the-moment decision to try to go the last 53 laps. We knew we were going to run out on the last lap. It was just a question of where. If we could get to the fourth turn, it would be all right.

"I couldn't have made it if I didn't have cars to draft. Don't race anybody and draft, draft, draft. As people fell off and went to the pit, I'd have to slow down and wait for somebody else to draft with."

It paid off in victory.

"The race is decided on elapsed time," he says. "It's not how fast you run, but who gets there first."